connections

I remember being fascinated by the Wired article about Big Data when it came out. I thought of it again a few months later as I was reading in the Council on Library and Information Resources' No Brief Candle report that "Over the next five years we will collect more scientific data than we have collected in all of human history" (Luce, 2008, p.45). As a librarian (technically a librarian-wannabe), I had to wonder: How do we organize information of that volume, growing at that rate? Visualization has long fascinated me as well, due to my art and design background. This is a way of handling large volumes of data, a way of working with it in an unorganized state, a way of coaxing the aggregate data to speak. So the current week's readings connect with me in a number of ways. Thinking of visualization reminded me of a recent documentary-type thing I had seen, "Journalism in the Age of Data." While I don't recall that it addresses anything related to learning analytics, it is about communication, which is the key to making analytic information truly useful. I found the presentation format of the film as fascinating as the content, much like the LAK MOOC.

Interestingly, in looking for the link to the documentary I came across a Google ad, one of those things that typically doesn't even register on my consciousness, leading to visualizing.org, which appears to be an amazing resource. A number of their visualizations and data sets are health-related. The potentials of health information is another area of interest for me. So I was pleased to find a blog post from Dianne Rees linked on the LAK Facebook page commenting on the commonalities between LAK and health informatics. She links to another reading that will have to go near the top of my pile, The Digital Infrastructure for a Learning Health System. I'll be adding Instructional Design Fusions to my Google Reader as well.

Funny that all these connections should show up on the eve of a course on connectivism...

random thoughts for 01/11/11

I'm glad to see I'm not the only one who views Hunch with disdain. It seemed to be a marketing engine targeted to people well above my pay grade. The recommendations were very poor, which is quite typical, but, as one of the readings said, "all the models are wrong." In the case on Hunch, I'm not sure that the model is particularly useful either.

The discussion board brings up the idea of using a hunch-like tool to identify learning styles in students. There was mention of "the necessity of some classification." I've always been suspicious of learning styles and multiple intelligences precisely due to to classification. I often see these concepts used for pigeonholing. The key point is multiplicity - we aren't limited to one type, but rather use all the types, each to differing degrees. I think there would need to be some sort of fuzzy logic that recognizes this degreeness and multiplicity, and that learning styles may be more relevant to the subject than the learner.

A strand of the thread muses on "what if higher ed needs to open up, so their courses can be screened by students?" I love this idea. I was rather disappointed by some of my last experiences in grad school. Had course descriptions been more detailed and clear, I might have been able to make better choices. That's a personal gripe rather than an LAK comment, I suppose.

Side discussion on the ELI presentation talks about the privacy issue as it relates to libraries. "Private or confidential? Couldn't library patrons learn what subjects are being actively pursued or researched, while keeping the identity of patrons confidential?" It's a good question. Librarian ethics place a high value on privacy. There could be a bit of professional resistance to making library data open to an extensive use of analytics.